Appalachian Community Histories – Pocket, Lee County: North Fork Powell River, the Black Mountain Railroad, and a Coal Field in the Records
Pocket is one of those Lee County places that is easier to find in old records than to explain as a simple town. It appears as a locality near Pennington Gap, tied to the North Fork of the Powell River, Straight Creek, Crab Orchard, Keokee, St. Charles, and the coal lands of Little Black Mountain. In the records, the name often appears as “Pocket,” “the Pocket,” or “the Pocket country,” which makes it both a place and a district.
That is part of what makes Pocket historically important. It was not remembered because it became a large incorporated town. It mattered because land companies, coal operators, railroad builders, geologists, and local families all used the name when describing the narrow coal country north and east of Pennington Gap. The official records do not preserve a single neat origin story, but they do preserve something better. They show how a mountain locality became part of one of the earliest coal-development corridors in far southwestern Virginia.
Land, Creeks, and the Older Pocket Country
Before Pocket became a coal-field name, it was a land name. A 1904 Lee County chancery record refers to land “situated in the Pocket” on the waters of Straight Creek. The same record mentions the “Pocket Company,” “the Pocket country,” Parsons land, Pennington land, and tracts measured in hundreds and even more than a thousand acres. That kind of court record does not read like a local history book, but it is one of the strongest clues to how people used the name in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pocket was already a known locality before the full coal boom gathered force.
The chancery record also shows why Pocket cannot be separated from land ownership. In this part of Lee County, coal history began with deeds, title bonds, mineral leases, old family tracts, and court disputes. The land had value as farmland and mountain ground before outside investors and mining companies studied its coal seams. Once railroads and coal companies entered the picture, the same hollows and creek valleys became part of a wider industrial map.
The Federal Survey of the Pocket Coal District
The clearest direct source for Pocket is the U.S. Geological Survey report by Cassius A. Fisher, “The Pocket Coal District, Virginia, in the Little Black Mountain Coal Field,” published in 1909 as part of USGS Bulletin 341. The USGS publication record identifies the report as a federal geological study, and the bulletin’s table of contents places Fisher’s Pocket study at pages 409 through 418, with a sketch map of the district on page 410.
That federal attention matters. The early twentieth century was a period when the United States Geological Survey was helping classify and describe coal lands across the country. Pocket was not just a name used by local families. It had become a mapped coal district, important enough to be placed in a national government bulletin beside other coal fields from the American West and Appalachia.
Pocket belonged to the Little Black Mountain coal field, which tied Lee County to the same borderland geology that shaped Harlan County, Wise County, and the larger Cumberland Mountain region. The mountains were not just scenery. They were the reason investors came, the reason railroads were built, and the reason small communities were pulled into national industrial markets.
The Coal Beneath the Name
Later federal geology helps explain why the Pocket district drew attention. Ralph L. Miller’s 1969 USGS report, Pennsylvanian Formations of Southwest Virginia, describes “the mining district known as The Pocket” in the Pennington Gap quadrangle. In that district, the report says three named coal beds had been mined in the part of the section equivalent to the Norton Formation: the Bentley, North Fork, and Penn Lee coals. The Penn Lee coal averaged about three feet thick and was the most extensively mined of the three, while the Bentley was mined the least.
That statement gives Pocket a firm place in the geology of Southwest Virginia. It was not simply a vague coal region. It was a district where named coal beds were known, mapped, and mined. The North Fork name also ties the coal to the stream geography of the area. Even today, the U.S. Geological Survey maintains a water-data station called “N F Powell River at Pocket, VA,” preserving the connection between Pocket and the North Fork Powell River in a federal record.
The 1973 USGS Geologic Map of the Pennington Gap Quadrangle by Ralph L. Miller and John B. Roen provides another important map source for the area. It covers Lee County, Virginia, and Harlan County, Kentucky, at a 1:24,000 scale, making it one of the best geological references for Pocket, Pennington Gap, and the surrounding coal country.
A Railroad from the Pocket
Coal did not become a large industry in this part of Lee County simply because coal was present. It needed a railroad. The National Register nomination for Keokee Store No. 1 gives one of the most important railroad references for Pocket. It states that in February 1906, the Black Mountain Railroad contracted with the Callahan Construction Company of Knoxville to build seventeen miles of railroad “from the Pocket, near Pennington Gap, through Crab Orchard, to Imboden” in Wise County.
That line places Pocket at the beginning of a coal-development route. The railroad linked the Pocket area near Pennington Gap to Crab Orchard, later Keokee, and to Imboden across the county line. It was part of the same industrial movement that turned older farming communities into coal towns and connected isolated mountain lands to markets outside the region.
The Keokee nomination explains that Crab Orchard had been an agricultural community before this transformation. In 1880, it had 128 heads of household, with nearly all engaged in farming. By the early 1900s, coal leases, railroad construction, coke ovens, company housing, and commissaries were changing the landscape. Pocket stood at the edge of that transformation, named in the records as the point from which the railroad route began.
Pennington Gap and the Coal Corridor
Pocket’s history also belongs to Pennington Gap. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources describes Pennington Gap as the commercial core of Lee County’s northern coal region, serving local residents, rural communities, and nearby coal camps. The town developed around the Cumberland Valley Branch of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and stood at a natural access point in the Powell River Valley.
The National Register nomination for the Pennington Gap Commercial Historic District gives the larger coal-boom context. It describes how mine development accelerated around 1905 and 1906, especially near St. Charles and the surrounding coal fields. In 1907, Lee County produced 198,913 tons of coal, which the nomination identifies as the first year of significant coal production. By 1910, eight major coal employers operated in Lee County, and miners and their families were settling in and around the northern part of the county.
That growth changed the meaning of nearby places like Pocket. A name that once described a valley, creek country, or land tract became part of a coal map. The same roads, streams, and ridges that local families used for farming and settlement became useful to railroad companies, coal companies, surveyors, and engineers.
Power, Water, and Industrial Infrastructure
Pocket also appears in the story of early power infrastructure. Lawrence J. Fleenor Jr.’s local-history study of mining artifacts at Osaka notes that before 1914 the Electric Transmission Company had built a steam electric plant at The Pocket in Lower Crab Orchard on the North Fork of the Powell River. Fleenor writes that the plant supplied electricity to mines near St. Charles and that the company reported plans for future transmission lines into Wise County.
This detail should be used carefully because it comes through a secondary local-history source, not directly from the company’s own surviving records. Still, it fits the larger pattern. Coal camps needed more than mines. They needed power, water, rail lines, stores, roads, houses, schools, and repair facilities. The early coal industry in Lee County was not just an underground story. It was an infrastructure story, and Pocket was one of the names attached to that infrastructure.
Pocket in the Records, Not Just on the Map
The challenge with Pocket is that it does not leave behind one obvious landmark like Keokee Store No. 1 or the Lee Theater in Pennington Gap. Its history is scattered across records. It appears in federal geological reports, chancery cases, railroad references, water data, mining articles, and local histories of nearby communities.
That scattered record is still meaningful. It shows Pocket as a place where older settlement, land ownership, coal geology, transportation, and industrial development came together. It also shows how mountain communities can be historically important even when they do not become towns with clear municipal archives.
In that sense, Pocket is a reminder that Appalachian history is often preserved sideways. A place may survive in a deed description, a coal-bed name, a railroad contract, a stream gauge, or a map in a federal bulletin. Pocket survives in all of those ways.
Why Pocket Matters
Pocket matters because it helps explain how northern Lee County changed during the coal boom. The story was not simply that companies arrived and built mines. It was that older land names, family tracts, creek valleys, and farming communities were reorganized around coal, railroads, and outside capital.
The name Pocket captured the shape of the land, but it also became a shorthand for economic possibility. To local families, it was a known place on Straight Creek and the North Fork Powell River. To geologists, it was a coal district. To railroad builders, it was a starting point. To coal companies, it was part of the route into the Little Black Mountain coal field.
Today, Pocket can be easy to overlook because nearby Pennington Gap, Keokee, and St. Charles left more visible public landmarks. But the records show that Pocket belonged to the same story. It was one of the small Lee County places where the mountains, the minerals, the river, and the railroad met.
Sources & Further Reading
Fisher, Cassius A. “The Pocket Coal District, Virginia, in the Little Black Mountain Coal Field.” In Contributions to Economic Geology, 1907, Part II: Coal and Lignite, 409-418. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 341-C. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0341/report.pdf
Miller, Ralph L. Pennsylvanian Formations of Southwest Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1280. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1969. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1280/report.pdf
Miller, Ralph L., and John B. Roen. Geologic Map of the Pennington Gap Quadrangle, Lee County, Virginia, and Harlan County, Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 1098. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1973. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq1098
United States Geological Survey. Pennington Gap, VA-KY, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle. 1955 ed. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1956. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/VA/24000/VA_Pennington%20Gap_186263_1955_24000_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “N F Powell River at Pocket, VA, USGS-03530400.” USGS Water Data for the Nation. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03530400/
MyTopo. “Pocket: Populated Place in Lee County, Virginia.” Based on U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System data. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://geo.mytopo.com/feature/virginia/lee/populated-place/1497099/pocket/
Library of Virginia. Chancery Records, Lee County, Virginia, 1904. Digitized by the Library of Virginia for the Chancery Records Index. https://archive.org/details/lee-co-va-chancery-records-1904
Library of Virginia. “Chancery Records Index Availability.” Accessed May 20, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/available.asp
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Keokee Store No. 1, Lee County, Virginia. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2007. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/052-0066_KeokeeStore_2007_-NRfinal.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Pennington Gap Commercial Historic District, Lee County, Virginia. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 2023. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/281-5002_PenningtonGapCommercialHD_2023_NRHP_Final.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Pennington Gap Commercial Historic District.” Virginia Landmarks Register. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/281-5002/
“The Pocket Coal Fields of Lee County, Virginia.” Coal Age 5, January 1 to June 30, 1914, 762-763. https://books.google.com/books?id=KnxNAAAAYAAJ
Campbell, Marius R., and Fred C. Pederson. The Valley Coal Fields of Virginia. Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin 25. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1925. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Valley_Coal_Fields_of_Virginia.html?id=XS0QAAAAIAAJ
Brown, Andrew, D. A. Taylor, and others. Coal Resources of Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 171. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1952. https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1952/0171/report.pdf
Virginia Energy. “Coal.” Virginia Department of Energy, Geology and Mineral Resources. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://energy.virginia.gov/geology/coal.shtml
Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research. Virginia Coal: An Abridged History. Blacksburg: Virginia Tech, 1990. https://energy.vt.edu/content/dam/energy_vt_edu/vccer-publications/Virginia_Coal_an_Abbridged_History.pdf
Lee County Historical and Genealogical Society. Bicentennial History of Lee County, Virginia, 1792-1992. Jonesville, VA: Lee County Historical and Genealogical Society, 1992. https://books.google.com/books/about/Bicentennial_History_of_Lee_County_Virgi.html?id=xTsUGQAACAAJ
Cox, W. Eugene, and Joyce Cox. Keokee, Virginia: Origins of an Appalachian Coal Mining Community. 2nd ed. Cox Consultants, 2013. https://books.google.com/books?cad=2&id=NsCMmQEACAAJ
Mize, Martha Grace Lowry. “History and Heritage Made Accessible: The Lee County Story.” Honors thesis, University of Mississippi, 2017. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=hon_thesis
“The Twentieth Century.” The Lee County Story. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://www.theleecountystory.com/twentieth-century-lee-county/
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. https://archive.org/details/coaltownslifewor0000shif
Fleenor, Lawrence J., Jr. The Last Remaining Artifacts of the Original Mining Operation at Osaka, Virginia: The Well, Compressor House, and CR Shop. Big Stone Gap Publishing, 2017. https://www.bigstonegappublishing.net/THE%20LAST%20REMAINING%20ARTIFACTS.pdf
FamilySearch. “Lee County, Virginia Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. Last modified March 9, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Lee_County%2C_Virginia_Genealogy
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Virginia.” Accessed May 20, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/virginia/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed May 20, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Pocket is the kind of place that proves how much Appalachian history survives in maps, court papers, coal reports, and railroad records. I like stories like this because they show that even a small locality can help explain how a whole mountain county changed.